Conquering new worlds: It’s up to you

I just returned from the Pyramyd Air Cup late Monday morning, and I’m beat (I got up at 2 A.M. to get ready for my early flight home). I was so exhausted that I couldn’t finish the blog post I’d planned, so my wife, Edith, pitched in and wrote a guest blog. In fact, this blog topic was her suggestion for a blog I could write in the future, so it was on the docket anyway.

Here’s a quote from the classic airgun book Smith’s Standard Encyclopedia of Gas, Air and Spring Guns of the World: “It may be assumed, therefore, that the spring-air design has about reached the perfection of its form.”

The above quote was written when .177-caliber airguns were delivering less than 650 fps — less than half the velocity of many springers sold today.

New worlds being conquered daily
It’s said that Alexander the Great cried when he discovered that there were no new worlds to conquer.

Airgunners have been tooling around to improve, invent and innovate in ways most manufacturers cannot afford because the cost of labor devoted to such efforts would kill them (if the stockholders didn’t revolt first).

That’s why people such as Lloyd Sikes, Dennis Quackenbush, Gene Lundy, Tim McMurray, Jim Maccari, Dave Rensing, Tom Gore, Big Bore Bob Dean, Ray and Hans Apelles, John McCaslin, Bob Moss, Gary Barnes, Robert Law and of course Dr. Robert Beeman are among an important group that disregarded accepted limits and advanced airgunning in ways others couldn’t imagine. (Pardon me for not mentioning all the movers and shakers — the list is too long.)

But it doesn’t stop here. There are plenty more innovations to come because there will be new people entering the realm without any preconceived notions.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
Doing new things is hard. If it’s easy, you’re probably doing it wrong! The advancements being made by the people I listed above didn’t happen overnight and didn’t happen without some serious birth pangs.

Almost all of the innovation and inventions come from ordinary people who are not endowed with lottery winnings and large inheritances. They’re regular folks like you and me — with families, limited funds, working on weekends and evenings, and trying to make it in life.

I doubt Jim Maccari sat down one day and immediately came up with his now-famous black tar. I can only imagine how many different things he tried.

Tim McMurray didn’t instantly develop his Steroid Streak mods. It took years of trial and error. I suppose he could have quit after the first hour/week/month/year, but he didn’t.

Lloyd Sikes took several years and some significant changes (and some setbacks) to bring his inventions to fruition.

Tom Gore had so many gas-piston versions before coming up with the final one, that I recall a time when there was a new one almost on a daily basis.

I’ve read plenty of comments on the blog from readers who have great ideas but assume they’re unable to do anything about them. Yes, it’s hard, but that’s not a good enough excuse to not do it. Persistence.

If you have an idea but are afraid of failure, then not trying at all is already a failure. You’ve already NOT done it. But if you try and then fail, at least you gave it a shot. And just because you failed doesn’t mean you can’t try again. And again.

The future of airguns is an open book
Expect airguns to change. People used to be creative and inventive because they HAD to. Necessity was truly the mother of invention.

Then, we got lazy and let the big corporations take over invention because they had the resources. The internet and the recent advent of affordable 3D printers will result in such a flurry of invention that we’ll catapult into an age of what used to be viewed as science fiction.

In the same way that desktop publishing changed people from readers into mini-publishing houses, the internet and 3D printers will change people from bystanders into inventors and small manufacturing plants — and changing the world of airguns into something W.H.B. Smith could never have envisioned.

Get ready for a rocket ride into the future. Just because someone else said it can’t happen doesn’t mean it can’t happen. But you have to get off the sofa and take that first step.

88 thoughts on “Conquering new worlds: It’s up to you”

The first thing that strikes me is…The absolute first step, every time, is recognize there’s a frontier needing to be conquered staring you right in the face…right now.
Poor Alexander, didn’t recognize Medical Science as a needing-to-be-conquered frontier until it was forever too late. (He thought Malaria was caused by bad air. Oops.)
One could go on, but the idea remains the same. Today James Cameron recognizes Space as a frontier, (a concept still being rejected by [somewhat unfortunate] living humans) and he makes movies to promote the exploration.
We know less about the ocean depths than the moon but yet the ocean floor remains largely an unexplored, even unrecognized frontier.
The true oddity is that, were you to decend to the depths, you might possibly run into…James Cameron …in his personal, deep diving submarine, exploring those depths, but more importantly, demonstrating there are frontiers, concepts, and possibilites staring at us wherever we go, waiting only to be recognized a such.
Of course once you do, you better do something about it…now…:)

And the most genius innovator of them all was left out – Fredrik Axelsson.

Building a complete new company that within 15 years have risen to become the mayor force behind the innovation of the most competitive field of airgunning – PCP.

Rifles like the Revolution, the Independence and a lot of other designs that no other maker have been able to put on the market. Thinking outside the frame with rifles like the Xtreme-versions shooting arrows, and make them profitable, all on the largest airgun market in the world..

Id like to give a nod of the hat to Doug Noble and his .257 dyotat valve for the Airforce Condor.
Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, it seems his valve design was recently exploited by some dubious chinese manufacturer that has stolen his glory and credit.

Point well taken, Edith. There seem to be plenty of tinkerers in this crowd–from whom I have learned much already–and it’s good to be reminded that we can all begin again, from wherever we are.

“Begin again.” I got that a lot, personally, from my time with the Guitar Craft project, and interestingly enough, the more I apply it the less cliche it gets. This is the preferred way to live life, really, and when I’m up to the task of getting out of my own way, the attitude never disappoints.

I’ve always got my mind chewing on some idea or other–I just can’t help that–but my conscious efforts these days seem to go into instilling the same sort of tinkerer-analyst disposition into others, most notably my own daughters. I figure that if I can get even half the fun into them that I have, thinking things through and trying them out, who knows what we might come up with?

(And I needed to read something like this tonight, too. A friend is in deep need of some prayer right now, and although I cannot claim to pray in the conventional manner, I have been sending on all the good will and love I can muster. It’s one thing to say “drink water, carry on”, but another to empathize specifically with those who have paid their dues and come through because of a belief in the goal.)

New worlds, for sure. And so long as idea geeks can run unrestrained in whatever direction they want to go, the new worlds will probably ultimately be measured as better ones.

Edith
What you just said reminds me so much of when I was building and racing the drag cars. People would tell me I was crazy when they found out what I was doing. Hmm, maybe I was a bit crazy. But my stuff was winning. And if I remember right when I started out I was making minimum wage.

This is one of the reasons that I like this blog. Not only is so much information exchanged so freely, we are encouraged to take our ideas and run with them. It is as you have pointed out that “we” are the ones who come up with the “new” and when the corporations realize there is a profit to be made, then they pick it up.

R&D on corporate levels can indeed be very expensive. Usually they get around that by having you sign papers that state that if you have an idea while in their employ, it belongs to them. Fortunately, they do not always win.

For those of you who are curious, the Armada is indeed a Marauder with a new dress. I contacted Crosman and the two stocks are interchangeable. You guys who like the look should be able to buy the stock from Crosman sometime in the future and swap out.

Me, I’m hoping they will come out with a deluxe model with a nice walnut stock shaped along the new European lines. We can all dream, can’t we?

Wasn’t a subtle change made to the Marauder when the polymer stock version came out? If so, and the MagPul stock becomes available [maybe direct from MagPul] it might fit new configuration Marauders and not old ones (I notice the current wood stocked versions come with an adjustable cheek piece, so original all wood stocks are no longer available)

Edith and BB,
I failed to understand what achievement Lloyd Sikes made to airgun.
Sikes was awarded a patent (patent # 20130104868) by USPTO, and Crosman purchased the rights for this patent to produce the Benjamin Rogue ePCP. The biggest disappointment of the Rogue was his claim for around 20-shots per fill, which in reality was never any better than other big bore airguns. He made other claims but they were never realized in his airgun such as 2500 ft-Lbs of energy. I ask BB in one of his previous Pyramydair blog similar questions.

I see you may not have much experience with manufacturing. There are many ways an invention can take — depending on how the company implements it.

Crosman elected to build the Rogue completely different from what Lloyd Sikes and I presented to them. So the result was a different rifle than the one we had envisions — and that Lloyd had built as a prototype.

As for the shot count — it was there all along, but Crosman elected to go for greater power at the loss of more shots. They wrote their software accordingly. In the final version of the gun they did go back to the original design and increase the shot count, but by then the Rogue was dead.

If you don’t understand airgun development, think about software. You can have an Apple operating system that is almost bulletproof and seldom crashes or you can have a Windows operating system that has quirks and lots of crashes. Much of that is in the implementation — not the original design.

When Microsoft first developed the Apple II operating system, it was pretty good. But of course it was far less complex than their first IBM PC DOS system. But with the Macintosh, Apple went the way of a larger word size (in the software) because they had a microprocessor that could handle it. When Microsoft upgraded their operating system in the 1990s, they overlaid it on the original 8-bit word, which caused many of the glitches they fought for the rest of the decade.

So, if you don’t understand airgun development, look elsewhere for a correlation.

B.B.,
A couple of Mr. Sikes claims in his patent (patent #20130104868):
(1) In patent claim #3, it said the gun can deliver up to 2500 ft-Lbs of energy.
(2) In patent claim #8, it said gun can maintain a constant muzzle velocity throughout a range of reservoir gas pressure from approximately 300 psi to 3500 psi, and throughout a range of projectile weights of from approximately 10 grains to 1200 grains.

Did Mr. Sikes prototype Airgun achieved the claims above? If not, what did he showed to Crosman?

From your comments I can tell that you aren’t familiar with the patent process. I don’t have the room to explain it to you here, because it is a very complex process that involves fine interpretation of the law and preparation for legal defense within the patent application.

May I recommend that you study the patent process in greater detail, with a focus on patent claims? Since I am not a patent attorney, I cannot really do more than this for you.

Lloyd Sikes developed a programmable electronic valve that can sense the remaining air pressure and vary the valve dwell time to sustain shot-to-shot velocity. Never been done that way before or since. Still a world-beater design if implemented correctly.

B.B.,
So why didn’t Sikes or Crosman implement it correctly? They already knew that design is good, right? If they have trouble in software implementation, Crosman have the resource to hire Software engineers or software company to do it right because this is a VERY important feature.

I just don’t see HOW Mr. Sikes convinced Crosman of that feature without actually demonstrating it or having a prototype type arigun that shows that it works? My only answer is GOOD SALESMANSHIP.

Lloyd did demonstrate exactly what I talked about (high shot count with little velocity variation) to Crosman. First in a You Tube video and next in a personal visit to Crosman, when he and I both presented the idea of the rifle formally. Crosman decided to implement the gun differently. That happens all the time.

When FDR sold Social Security to the American public, do you think he ever mentioned the fact that Congress could access the funds for their owen projects? Of course not.

An idea can be implemented in any number of ways. And those implementing it can change their minds in midstream. That is what happened with the Rogue. Lloyd Sikes was out of the picture at that point.

While we’re at it — lets ask that they incorporate ChairGun and a chronograph [a pair of sensor ports in the barrel] so we can get a direct read-out of the velocity, and instructions for the resulting trajectory to adjust point of aim.

Joe,
It sounds like he had everything planned like he wanted it to function but Crosman got power-hungry because they wanted to sell the product, and power has been selling for them. It’s an either/or situation. You either get more power for fewer shots or less power for more shots. The gun itself would probably prefer a balance but that wouldn’t be innovative enough to warrant a $1000 price tag, so in their eyes it must break some unwritten rule to turn heads and open pocketbooks. Once again, the golden egg has been squandered to the point of spoilage by corporate greed…Thanks Crosman!

It’s too simple to say that. Crosman has a marketing plan and they used it to implement this idea. In retrospect, yes, it was flawed. But before they implemented it, nobody knew how the idea would be received.

Remember when you look at these things, you are seeing the results, not the planning. It’s best to internalize each of these lessons so we don’t make the same mistakes again.

B.B.,
It did seem a bit scathing but I think it helped get the point across. And you’re right! Hindsight may not be 20/20 but it’s a lot clearer than looking through $$$. It’s just too bad little guys like us don’t have the financial means to bring their dreams to fruition without having to sell the farm!
In other news, The RRT project is on the table- to the tune of $800! and I still have to build the prototype but have been assured all legal concerns and payments will be taken care of for this fee. That’s a big gamble right now for me! I may have to sell some shares but let me get the prototypes done first. Anybody wanna run this saw?

People work to make a living. Corporations are in business to make money. People and companies make mistakes. Sometimes, decisions result in unintended consequences. We’ve all made mistakes or had critical errors in judgement because there is no such thing as perfection.

Perfection is impossible because your idea of perfection is different than mine, Tom’s, Kevin’s, my next-door neighbor’s, my brother’s and everyone else’s.

So, go ahead & do your darnedest to create perfection — and then see if the world agrees with you. It won’t.

And what is mediocre to you may actually turn out to be the optimum product for the task. Not perfect, not a failure, just optimum.

That’s why there are lots of 10-meter rifles, not just one; lots of 10-meter pistols, not just one; lots of sporting guns, not just one; hundreds of different pellets, not just one; and lots of different computers, not just one.

This also relates to the comment someone made long ago about AirForce Airguns changing their guns over time. Someone stated that they should have just waited to come out with the final version of their guns instead of creating new updated versions. If that held true for everything, we still wouldn’t have had cars, motorcycles, houses, clothing or software. Get what I’m saying?

Edith,
I didn’t mean to upset you. I just feel that we should try our best to be perfect that’s all.
I have notice in this blog and other websites that people complaint about “Made in China” products being poor quality. Either the Chinese didn’t do their best or they weren’t paid enough money to do their best, but in any case, people JUST think that Chinese cannot make a quality product. Never mind that they are only willing to pay less than $100 for an air rifle but expect German FWB quality. If we don’t try our best to be perfect, people will also think that Americans cannot make a quality product like the Chinese.

The other day we were talking about how the TX200 uses a centrally located Transfer port and that being one of the reasons for it’s superiority. Since so many other guns use an offset TP is there anyone currently testing seal face designs intended to direct airflow toward the TP? Can’t let Air Arms have all the thunder!

It seems like the logical next step to me. It would eat up R&D funding quick I’m sure but the automotive designs could serve as the trailblazers! My dilemma is how to keep the air from compromising the seal and still direct it to an offset port. That’s why they get the big bucks!
How about the Hemi?It’s been proven to be superior to other designs in automotive combustion chambers. Compression IS power!

Reb
Would be easy to make the piston but think about machining the cylinder chamber. Mainly the shape of the chamber that the piston would have to match.

But if it was done I bet it would speed up the air flow through the transfer port hole. It would kind of make that venturi effect like they use in carburetors to speed the airflow up to atomize the air fuel mixture.

My QB-36 is far from ideal but I believe at least one of the answers you seek lies within.
It’s compression end/ transfer port and cocking block are machined as a separate part, pressed together and pinned like the barrel on an AK, although very crudely.I can’t really tell if it’s also welded but if so it looks like it was only done to fill in any pitting and small gaps, then the excess ground away, adding minimal structural integrity.
The barrel would have to also be centrally located in order to keep transfer port as short as possible(may have to talk to AA about that one?).
That’ll do for now but mainly because I don’t understand what you mean by where it meets the wood. Lemme know so I can get started on that one.

I am a designer by trade and have worked in the electrical and mechanical design fields for 30+ years. Seems the best innovation comes from people who solve problems in different ways because they weren’t restricted by preconceived notions.

The first canoe I designed was an 18 foot, high volume, cedar/spruce strip canoe that weighs 56 pounds (on a scale). A friend from the karate club was very interested in the project and checked in on the construction progress regularly but never said much. Later, I was telling him that it paddled well even with 6 people on board when he commented that he could not believe that being so light, it was strong enough to float rather let alone carry a load like that. Seems that he had worked for a wood canoe manufacturer for 10 years and thought that my approach to the design and construction were so unconventional that it couldn’t possible float. Not knowing any better, I just built it how it seemed right to me. Been using that canoe for close to 20 years now – still floats fine.

A quote that I like (think it was by Albert Einstein) states…

You can’t solve a problem by using the same thinking that created the problem in the first place.

Vana2, I learned a valuable lesson while building the portable structures we used to house the games and teddy bears. By spending extra on Fir lumber unlike most others using yellow pine we only had to carry half the weight most others did. Fuel savings alone paid the difference at the first location. I’d like to build a Piroque for running trotlines( inflatables and trotlines don’t play well together) and it must be portable so I don’t have to build a trailer and under 14′ to avoid registration fees but it’s gotta be manageable by myself. I’d like to thank you for your inspiration! Congratulations on getting the Bear!

I make “primitive” bows and arrows and the engineering that goes in to the designs is anything but primitive. The wood goes through extreme stresses so material selection and grain structure is critical. By designing my canoe and kayak paddles as if they “bows that shoot water” I get paddles that flex from tip of blade right through the handle under heavy load. Because the stress are distributed over the whole paddle I can make them much lighter without sacrificing strength.

Understand your “design specs” for the Piroque – hope you do make one. The requirements for my canoe were that it had to be light enough to be portaged long distances, big enough to carry two people and a weeks’ worth of cold-weather camping gear. deep enough for safety in spring ice-water conditions and it had to track well when paddled. The motivation was speckled trout as big as 5 pounds! (the trout were hitting dragonfly nymphs and dark leech patterns in shallow mug bottom bays off the main lake all week – we had a hoot with the fly rods!!)

Design is still in the What works best? stage right now but when I do choose a design I’ll be letting Ya’ll know. Hope you’re still eating trout!
Have you seen the pedal powered Kayak yet? If not I could look it up again but it’s a simple search.

If you are in the “design stage” you might want to consider a “cedar strip canoe” style of construction. Lots of forums on that subject.

Very flexible approach that allows the use of compound curves for light weight and strength. Does not have to be expensive clear grain cedar, in fact spruce 2x8s or 2x10s (wider lumber has smaller knots and better grain pattern) ripped in to ¼” by 1 ½ inch planks fitted over a form are much more robust. In addition to some hand tools all you need is access to a table saw or band saw and a good quality orbital sander.

Two layers of 3-once fiberglass (uses much less heavy expensive resin) on the outside and one layer inside will make a strong composite hull.

I do caution you – building small watercraft can be addictive! (I have two 17 foot, 40 pound fishing kayaks for sale right now LOL!)

Go for it! Winter is approaching – you could have a custom made boat ready for the open water season.

Darn, now you have me thinking about making a small skiff for fishing the river where it is too deep to wade – nice smallmouth bass there!

I like the Einstein quote, but I think many (or even most) companies ignore that concept. Things don’t make sense, but people like to think they’re right and something else must be wrong. They stick with what they know and stay in their comfort zone — because it’s scary and untested outside of the zone. Also, the culture in some companies can be very oppressive. If you think outside the box and your ideal fails, you could lose your job. So, it’s better/easier to stay in the safe zone and keep your job.

As they say, before you start thinking outstde the box, better bloody well have a box to start with.
It’s called “credibility.”
Ain’t no buck-private E-2’s ever made no world class policy decisions, however right or wrong they were.
It’s still called “credibility.”

Much of the advancement of airguns’ popularly has to be credited to the retailers and various web sites in bringing information and products to the retail market. A lot of this thanks to PA and their aggressive marketing. There are many others as well which is all good for the air gun shooters and general acceptance of air guns as a hobby. This blog itself truly does provide information flow to and from a large group of shooters.

My own experience with air guns started at a local big box store, but soon that source could not provide the information and products which I found on the internet retailers’ sites.

Another reason I learned the joys of spackle…not to mention always painting the walls in eggshell white…or other easily reproduced standard [patching] colors. (Don’t forget to walk around ‘tother side to patch the exit hole, too. Also, it’s worth a look over your shoulder to see if the neighbor’s house needs a bit of attention.
Hope the picture windows, (yours and their’s) need no further attention:)

My reason for choosing the piroque was that it’s shallow draft would minimize portaging and the extra stability of the design. Around here a boat may use any “navigable waterway”.Most bodies being shallow and narrow creeks would necessitate a flat bottom or very shallow draft whereas I intend to have a bubble of air beneath mine. I’m in no hurry t do anything in particular and got too many irons in the fire and no money to work with as we speak but I’ll let you know my decision when I reach one.I gotta install a CAD program when I have room for one!
Thanks, and be safe out there!
Reb

Interesting. I like to think that there is no limit to human ingenuity. I believe that is true of airgunners from everything I’ve seen. But there are the laws of physics to consider. It’s like the irresistible force meets and immovable object. We can make spring piston guns more powerful but to what end? They would just be duplicating firearms but not as well. You can substitute a gas spring for a mechanical spring. I can’t imagine what else can be done. The field of firearms is not much of an inspiration. Magazines are bursting with new products, but they are all the same, reworks of AR designs and polymer pistols. The AR was invented in the late 50s. Someone has said that the assault rifle design is so refined thanks to the huge wars of the 20th century that there’s not much else to be done within the current technology. Perhaps smart bullets and scopes are the next step that is almost the end of shooting as we know it. This same commenter said about Maxim’s first machine gun: “Now you could put an idiot behind it and still get your 500 rounds per minute.” And you would be able to say the same for bullseyes and smart guns.

If innovators can find a new problem to solve that would be the first and most impressive step.

Like we talked about a little while back. A smooth bore barrel that you could screw different end pieces on that have different twist rates. Then have easy access to power adjustment on that gun. You would have more ways to tune to a specific pellet.

Gunfun1,I just got the idea.PCP guns have variable power.Multipump pneumatics have variable power.How about a gas spring piston gun with a ratcheting system and a very compressible gas.Break the barrel (or lever)once for regular power and break it twice for “oh my gosh…”. -Tin Can Man-

Or maybe two power source’s. If you break the barrel once it cocks a nitro piston,break the barrel again and it also cocks a spring.

So you could shoot it with one pump as a nitro piston all the time or if you want more power cock again and you have both.

Or pull back only so far when you cock a spring gun and it will have racheting stops. The farther you pull back the more the spring compresses. The more power you have. And you could stop at any of those spots in the cocking travel that you want.

Apposing pistons meeting in the middle, under-lever, automatic pellet magazine, and adjustable power level.
search 6 stroke engine where a piston is in place where valves would be. with more power you could send heavier pellets at a subsonic speed.

Hi Edith,An off topic question.When P.A. publishes a scopes’ weight does it include the batteries if included?How about the rings if included?How about the lens covers if Included?How about the wrench if included?Or is it a case of some do and some don’t ,and so we can never know what’s real till we get it home?…OK I know that’s more than one question,but you can see how hard it is to compare.Any insight?-Tin Can Man-

All those extra things don’t add even one ounce of weight — except for the mounts. The weight of the mounts is never included. The batteries would be included and not the wrenches, since they don’t stay on the scope.

We get the weight of the scope from the manufacturers, and I believe it does include the batteries — but that’s just a guess and does not apply to all manufacturers. I doubt it includes the lens covers.

It’s not always easy to get straight answers from manufacturers. In fact, you’ll see that guns that come with scopes will sometimes show the weight of the gun with the scope & rings and other times just the gun by itself even though the gun has no open sights and you must use a scope. When I discovered that was going on, I started asking mfrs if the weights they provided included the scope & rings, but I’ve discovered that they don’t always adhere to the spec they claim. They want sporting guns to appear within a certain weight range, so they provide the weight that fits that range, even if it doesn’t include the optics.

Spot on advice for present day society not just airgunners. The can do attitude seems to be an endangered species. A person can do a lot if they put their mind to it. Let’s all role up our sleeves and put some sweat and problem solving skills to use. Add a bit of good fortune to that and some body might end up producing some heirloom quality products in this great country once again.

I’m always working on some airgun making it better than what corporate America is willing to do. I put in improved air valves, better hammer springs, increase air volume and pressures, tinker with barrel lengths, stock designs, various other parts. I’ve actually come up with some really good stuff.